


Those Who Drink the Dark

by mako_lies (wingeddserpent)



Series: Vagrant Story Ficbits [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 5.0 spoilers, Butchering Urianger-speak, Families of Choice, Gen, Healing, Secrets, pre 5.1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 13:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21300428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/mako_lies
Summary: The bitterness Alisaie devours, that her brother may sip sweetness. Urianger keeps her secrets, as ever.
Relationships: Urianger Augurelt & Alisaie Leveilleur
Series: Vagrant Story Ficbits [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535234
Kudos: 12





	Those Who Drink the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "those who drink the dark," lifted from Vagrant Story. 
> 
> Set between 5.0 and 5.1.

New Il Mheg night sings gentledark songs. His reading drowned out by that pleasing melody. Books upon books open but unread. His focus scatters over events but recently past, so many shards of incandescent light. Expectation thrums through the hollows of his bones. Alisaie bursts through his door, shattering the song. In all things, her passion bursts forth. She catapults herself into a chair with ungainly limbs.

For her, then, Urianger was waiting. Blood flecks at the corners of her worry-chapped mouth. Another’s, the song sings him. She protects her secret hurts, folded in his chair. Blue eyes dark as a sunless sea, Alisaie stares at him.

“My lady, where art thou injured?”

Alisaie exhales. The hem of her shirt lifts—

Sluggish bleeding scratches across her side from a partially sharp blade. Red-dotted purpleblack bruises over the pronounced lines of her ribs.

The line of her back is ever proud. Pain does not cow her. Her Grandfather’s Pride is a whisper through the swaying outside flowers. ’Tis not a pride Urianger can share—as ever, he prefers her Whole. His hands settle on the cool metal of his planisphere. Aether flows from the spin of the star to gently reknit her flesh. Alisaie is ever heedless of violence to her form—Urianger can butoffer succor. “Thank you.” Her smile is reward enough for the next time he will heal her.

“There was no-one to heal thee? Where didst thou wander?”

Urianger sits at her feet. Their eyes nearly level. Alisaie unfolds herself and her shirt falls to cover remade skin. “If you must know, it was in Eulmore. I went to visit my brother and was—waylaid.”

“Could he not have healed thee just as well?”

Alisaie smiles a blood smile. “Of course. But I didn’t want him to know.”

Their oldest shared secret. Urianger ever finds himself spun in secrets—others’ and his own. The bitterness she devours, that her brother may sip sweetness.

Alphinaud would not thank her—Alisaie cares naught for the hurt her twin will feel on her behalf. On her own, Alisaie will learn that to spare her brother pain, she must needs spare her own. “What hast befallen thee?”

“A simple scuffle, nothing more. Some ruffians spoke ill of my brother. I couldn’t well let it pass.” Glinting steel shines in her.

“What words proved sufficient for such punishment, my lady?”

Alisaie wipes away the blood with her sleeve. The song is sharper but no less dark, singing of vengeance. “I shan’t repeat them. Not even to you, Urianger. Such vileness has no place in this shard, nor any other.” Especially about her twin, she need not say.

Always has it been her way, to act as the Sword of her Brother. Her Blade wetted on the blood of any who should think to harm him. Urianger stands. He holds her and the chair tightly. “I care only for your safety, my lady,” aching for all that he cannot protect.

“Thank you, Urianger.”


End file.
